The cost of living increased an average of 9.9 percent across the top 50 major cities in the U.S. between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015, according to the Chapwood Index. The Index ... is a more precise measure of the cost of living than the government's Consumer Price Index (CPI), which showed a cost-of-living increase of less than 1 percent over the same time span. The 9.9 percent increase exposes why middle-class Americans - salaried workers who are given routine pay raises and retirees who depend on annual increases in their corporate pensions and Social Security payments - cannot maintain their standard of living. The Chapwood Index shows what the CPI tries to conceal: that the government keeps the CPI low to avoid spiraling debt increases, which are due primarily to corporate, income, sales and other tax increases at the local, state and federal levels, as well as rising insurance costs. For more than a century, the CPI has purported to reflect the fluctuation in prices for a typical "basket of goods" in American cities. But it hasn't really done that for more than 30 years, and since salary and benefit increases are pegged to the CPI, the middle class has seen its purchasing power decline dramatically over the last three decades. And this trend will continue as long as pay raises and benefit increases are tied to a false CPI, [Chapwood Index founder Ed] Butowsky says. "The CPI ... has been manipulated to show a lower cost of living increase in order to reduce government outlays," he says.